User Comments on Manifold® System
At manifold.net we're lucky to be an Internet company because all of our customers are online and can tell us what they think about our products. If you would like to comment, please send a note to sales@manifold.net.
Here are excerpts from recent email we've received as well as from various public postings on the web:
User Comments on Manifold System Release 8
" Also, for anyone new to Manifold, I always point out one aspect of Manifold that sets it apart from virtually all other software I've used: The help menu is actually helpful. All help menus should be this good. " (Forum posting)
" I have to say the more I use Manifold and become familiar with it the more I like it. I am so pleased with how stable the software is. I have not had a single crash since I started using Manifold back in May. ArcView crashes on me at least 2 or 3 times a day! I have been doing a lot of editing that involves dissolving polygons and when I attempted to Merge polygons in ArcView my DBF file was constantly corrupting and losing records and not combining others. Manifold has sailed through this process. I am really happy I chose Manifold!! And thanks for all the help, this is a great GIS community! " (Forum posting)
" ...I am just finishing performance tuning a US Cellular mobile phone company's coverage data stored in Oracle. I developed a bunch of techniques for coordinate thinning, gridding and tiling in Manifold that required a chunk of Manifold code cutting. The customer has FME (as I) and Manifold and, in the end, we used Manifold for all the data preparation. Needless to say that I was, in the end, very impressed with Manifold's speed, power and flexibility. I put a bunch of recommendations to the customer and they look like taking on board all I recommended. I normally don't do much Manifold work except loading/visualising Oracle data - or SQL Server 2008 Katmai - as PL/SQL and Oracle is the tool I use each and every day. But when I do go to Manifold I continue to love using my SQL skills in the product. " (Australia)
"Coming from an organisation where we had manifold I was kind of happy to find the new office had mapinfo, but after a little over a year I’m missing manifold. mapinfo’s just shockingly bad, even after upgrading to MI professional v9: labelling, exporting, layer control, tools, intuitive GUI, in fact having functions available through the GUI at all, manifold wins all round. I didn’t like the over zealous way the manifold help files were written and I reckon your marketing dept could use a decent graphic designer, but other than that you deserve hands down victory. " (UK)
"FWIW I really like SQL 2008 and Manifold together. For all the chatter on the forums about 'cartographic capabilities', the Manifold & SQL 2008 together enable me to do things I could not even dream of 5 years ago! Of course then, I only dreamed of something to replace ArcView. Yes, I would like better labeling, but there has been an explosion in the amount of GIS data available which, in my opinion, is just beginning and that means we need the tools to work with it. Leveraging the Enterprise databases that are already in place helps us immensely. Thanks! " (USA) [Referring to Manifold's direct support for SQL Server 2008 Spatial]
"You've been astonishingly helpful — indeed I was so astonished by the offer in the final paragraph of your last message that I've been using it as an example when talking to colleagues "on the cusp" of adding Manifold to their suite of tools. It's not hard to show people how Manifold can make their life easier; in my limited experience the "instant convert" quickly finds a list of things they never want to do in Arc* again. " (USA) [From a thread exploring a bug report with tech support]
"I am a new Manifold user who tried ESRI ArcGIS (9.2) for several months and in the end got tired of issues (such as out of memory errors when trying to export subsections of an ECW file) to try and create images for background use in traffic modeling software. I came across a reference to manifold through googling the ESRI error messages, and when I discovered it was within my budget, I bought it. Am very happy with it so far. If I cannot find a solution to a problem in the help files, I always find it here. " (Forum posting)
"I'm sure this has been commented upon before, but I'm amazed at Manifold's speed in bringing out fixes. I sent a mail to tech on 17th April regarding a bug exporting data to Oracle 9i and low and behold the fix appears in a release a few days later on the 26th!! Keep up the good work Manifold. " (Forum posting)
"Thank you manifold, you guys are a true blue bunch of GIS legends, and I have told many of my colleagues down under about the virtues of your product. " (Australia)
"Having eagerly awaited delivery of my new 64bit machine (running XP Pro 64bit, 6Gb Ram and an Nvidia Quadro FX 4600 video card) I'm amazed at the CUDA performance. The first thing I did with the machine was install Manifold Ultimate 64 bit edition. Following the example in the Manifold help, I loaded one of my own surfaces and performed a transform on it. With Manifold using CUDA facilities on the video card, the process took 33 seconds. With CUDA switched off, the process took just under 20 minutes!!! " (Forum posting)
"Yes, at Manifold they "plant trees" very well. I might add, that the trees are also very strong, powerfull, and very seldom crash. :-) The people at Manifold are focused on making the product, and making it better. They put very very very few resources into sales to new customers. They let their satisfied users sell the product.
I've been using Manifold 4 years, and haven't used a tech support token yet. Manifold is very stable, and quite a work horse to boot. I suggest that you purchase a copy, and get one of the training videos from GIS Advisor. The only way to know if Manifold will really meet your needs is to give it a test drive. You can always get a refund (within 30 days) if you are not satisfied with it.
We currently have 7 licenses where I work (and will purchase 2-3 more in the next month or so), and I have a personal license at home. Thare are many, many things that Manifold does extremely well, but there are also a few that need improvement. You really need to test drive it to know if the weak points are deal breakers, or if the many strong points will offset the few weak points. Manifold is an extremely good GIS software, don't let the low price fool you. Good luck! " (Forum posting)
"I see that V8.0.6 was released yesterday and the problem referenced above is now fixed. The total turn-around time for this process was 3 days! I realize that the timing of the report probably resulted in this extremely fast fix. I expect that Manifold had accumulated a number of items and had decided to release the update - my input came late in this process. None-the-less, I have found Manifold amazingly responsive in this area.
I used MapInfo for about 10 years. Two confirmed bugs, both of which I considered to be serious, were reported in V4 and remained in the product at V7.5 when I stopped using it. Manifold's approach is always based upon excellence - they simply want problems fixed and they get the job done asap. A great company with a fine product! " (Forum posting) Editor's note: MapInfo is a competitor's GIS product.
"From my tests, GeoServer using PostGIS to store it's data outperforms Manifold backed with MAP files or PostGIS. I'm sure as Manifold matures this will get better. I'd really like to see some improvements on the enterprise DB side as far as connection pooling / multiple simultaneous queries to pull in data. On a side note, I'm really pleased Manifold decided to add PostGIS support. Being that Manifold is a low-cost alternative to ESRI products, it makes sense that it would support a low-cost database. As much as we'd all love to be able to run SQL server, the $5k/CPU license cost is highly prohibitive.
All that said, the ability to quickly develop and roll out new Maps far outweighs our need for tiled mapping or extremely high performance right now. This is where Manifold really shines. I love the fact that we can drop a newly developed MAP file out on a server and it just works without modification and looks EXACTLY the same as it does in the client program. Using the same drawing components on the client and server = brilliant. " (Forum posting) Editor's note: This is from a thread about using Manifold IMS as a tiled server to OpenLayers for large data sets. This is a new and different approach from the usual HTML application of IMS products. The recommended improvements are underway!
"These guys are good ... I reported the issue yesterday, they reproduced all three issues mentioned in my previous post, two are already fixed and the other is being worked on! This is great service, keep up the good work Manifold :-) " (Forum posting)
"Hot dawg! All clear here too. Thanks to the Manifold team for prevailing on a tough bug that they couldn't replicate for quite awhile and to release it as an update right away. Dedication to fixing bugs, releasing updates, and the quick install process are all great additional aspects of Manifold and much appreciated. " (Forum posting) Editor's note: routine updates are free for Manifold licensees - no maintenance fee required.
"This is the exact reason that I use Manifold, I don’t have the funding to even think about a full blown ESRI GIS solution. We NEED GIS, but we can’t afford to go with a full ESRI implementation. It would easily cost more than the $22,000 mentioned to do the ESRI implementation we need. Sure, there are things that we could do with ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Server that we can’t do with Manifold, but there are also things that we can do with Manifold that can’t be done with ESRI.
The bottom line here is that Manifold serves the needs of our users that are currently using it, at a fraction of the cost to do the same thing with ESRI. I currently have some internal IMS sites that meet the needs of many employees (with more planned once I get the new dual quad core processor, 24GB RAM, 64bit server up and running), and a pilot project with Manifold running on 4 desktops with some very basic application specific customizations to the standard Manifold GUI interface. The people involved in the pilot project love Manifold, and it is exceeding their expactations (not GIS people, 3 are engineers, and one is a planner). My software investment for the IMS, and the pilot project was less than $2,000. " (Forum posting on the James Fee Blog)
"Before I used Manifold, I used Arc/Info, Atlas DOS, Atlas Windows, Arcview, Mapinfo, and Maptitude. Before that I had a couple of Fortran programmers meeting my mapping needs. Oh, and I was a beta tester for Autodesk World a long time ago, I almost forgot about that.
Learning Manifold was no problem. I've probably only uncovered 1 percent of what it can do, but it's the right 1 percent for my needs. Read the docs and give it a week or two. You'll be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to pick up and how powerful it is." (Forum posting)
"I've used other GIS packages before I used Manifold. I would say that things are different, yes, but more intuitive than it's competitors. In training other "beginner" users on manifold, I have found they pick it up very quickly. Within about a week or so of regular use, they were very comfortable with it, and surprising themselves at how easy it was to perform certain functions compared to it's competitors.
My personal opinion is that manifold has made some previously cumbersome traditional GIS tasks much easier, and work "the way they should". Scripting and spatial query-writing are among it's most powerful, not to mention the vast array of built-in functions that would otherwise take hours to script. Also, the IMS functionality is built in so it's easy to make an interactive web mapping application." (Forum posting)
"I am currently using your Universal Version of Manifold and also, a runtime engine for a webserver. I love the program, it does way more than ESRI. I even have an ArcInfo license and it does more than that!!!" (USA)
"You have a great product. I often got frustrated with it in the beginning [especially the installation process] but now I feel that you have an AWESOME product." (USA)
"I've recently started creating views of subsets of my data in the SQL Server Mgmt Studio and realized that if I select the geometry field as well, than I can define that view (using the Administrator Console) as a drawing and link it as such. Just wanted to say good work Manifold! This is extremely handy!" (Forum posting)
"I am one of many lucky people who purchased Manifold GIS to switch over from ArcView/ArcGIS. Thank you very much for designing an excellent product." (Australia)
"[Our partner] trained 15 or so people in India recently and it went extremely well. Many were GIS virgins and came away amazed at the possibilities. He reported [Manifold] to be very easy to teach and for new users to learn." (India) [Editor's Note: A good trainer can get people up to speed in Manifold very quickly.]
"Good job on Version 8 - the speed increase in loading files and screen refreshes is huge and very much appreciated." (USA)
"For very poor municipalities here in Honduras, Central America. Manifold was answer in order to have a real commercial GIS at low price at hand. They have planned expend $5,500.00 in a license of ArcView + Autocad. Manifold is just $500.00, the other $5K has been used in GPS, computers, and training. This municipalities has an annual income of $45,000.00 (very poor municipalities).
We work with 21 municipalities, one of this municipalities has increase this taxes from $45k to $421,000 in the initial phase of the project. Making [their] first cadastral map with 6 persons, 3.2k parcels, six month of work. Manifold as a low cost way to "see" what happened in [their] land for first time in [their] life!!!!" (Forum postings)
"I am a huge fan of Manifold working under 64 bits. Using my 32 bit laptop (2 gb RAM) I could only include about 7 or 8 counties before the drive time routine would just run out of memory. With my 64 bit desktop and 16 gb of RAM, I can include our whole state of approx. 150 counties, the drive time and other tools run without a hitch and much faster. If you don't have a 64 bit computer with lots of RAM, you may find you will have to cut your data up into smaller blocks to keep it workable. Quite a pain, cause I had to do it too before the miracle of 64 bit." (Forum posting)
"Some time ago I asked for assistance in selection of hardware and software to support Manifold 8.00 x64. We have completed the recommended builds, and I would like to thank the forum for its input and technical assistance. Our new workstations came in at just under $4000 CDN funds each and the server was somewhat more at just over $5000.
When compared to the original dual core units that we operated the new Quad cores are, dare I say blisteringly fast. Our production work timelines have improved and our profits have almost paid for the new work stations, not bad for the second week with our new equipment, and of course the new and improved Manifold 8.00! So I am figuring the upgrade to x64 was well worth the price." (Forum posting) [Editor's Note: These are exceptionally powerful machines. Good to see Manifold x64 can make full use of them!]
"I have version 8 installed and working fine. Once the files are saved in version 8 ...they really open and works fast!" (Argentina)
"My company (in Western Australia) has gone from one copy of Arcview 3, to 8.1, then discovered manifold several years ago and now have 10 copies of that, for about the price of one copy of arcview.
The way to do things in Manifold is quite different to arcview, but reading the manual allows you to learn quite quickly. Generally most of the things you need scripts to do in arcview can be done through the user interface in Manifold. Manifold aims to give the functionality of the arcinfo/arceditor end of esri's product range, not arcview.
You get a couple of free tech support incidents with every manifold licence. We have 20 unused ones as in over 3 years of using Manifold I haven't had reason to use one yet, this forum has always produced answers very quickly.
Import/export capability seems to be better than arc, although I wish it would open surpac files, and autocad has to be saved back to the 2000 version. There is also a bit of a quirk to do with local offsets of projections when exporting which is not a problem once you understand it but seems to catch most people out the first few times.
It only took a couple of weeks of using Manifold for me to not want to go back to arcview. So many things are done so much more easily, plus manifold very rarely crashes." (Forum posting)
"I am a consultant in Far North Queensland and have been using Manifold for 4 years after using Arc 3.x to Arc 8.3. Manifold can handle all local datasets (ie. importing and exporting) that I have tried and is more reliable and productive. Generally you don't need the bucket full of scripts that you need with Arc. However as Manifold has no wizards, it can sometimes take a lot of time to work out how to do things using the built in tools. Most process involve working out a sequence of several steps." (Forum posting)
"I've fallen in love with Manifold. (And I used to say that about MapInfo!)" (USA)
"Many thanks for M8. While I am not yet using databases (that time is fast approaching) there are numerous improvements and fixes that have made life more efficient for me 'at the daily coal face'" (Australia)
"Version 8 is fast!" (Forum posting)
"I have to add to this subject. I just upgraded about 15 minutes ago and in terms of speed I am absolutely blown away. I often work with over 200K point datasets and with 7x and prior it could be slow loading from Oracle and when moving around the screen. Version 8 is dramatic in comparison. What used to take up to a minute has now been reduced to 10 seconds. Saving and loading of components is also dramatically improved.
Fantastic - by far and away the best upgrade yet!
Keep up the great work (you have made me a happy man and now I can leave the office that much earlier :) )" (Forum posting)
"I too am very impressed with the speed. I can zip around a very large linked ecw (granted always pretty fast) with a ton of detailed contour data, various drawings, a large surface etc with total ease. I really love the progressive rendering." (Forum posting)
"One more time, Manifold beat ESRI.
In fact, to keep the right to receive the ESRI updates (from 9.1 to 9.2 for example) anybody must pay nearly 1000$ / year (for a software that worth 2400$!) And new functionnality are always reserved for the most expensive version (ArcInfo) when they are released (for example: the last cartographic improvement in 9.2).
At the same time, Manifold deliver major upgrade from 7.x to 8 for 50$!
That's the kind of business I like! Congratulations!." (Forum posting)
"Of course the speed has increased impressively. Thanks to new version I can open large SRTM layers in fraction of a second." (Forum posting)
"I've just upgraded to 8.0 and have to say I'm really impressed with speed improvements in the rendering engine. I keep a land parcel dataset in Oracle consisting of 40,000 polygons. After importing this data into a project, it now renders very very quickly and is a massive improvement on 7.0. I also like the fact that you can carry on zooming in even before the whole drawing has finished rendering. " (Forum posting)
"I realize I am pretty late to the party here, since I've just now started playing with UI scripting. It's been less than a few hours and I'm already hooked. I just wrote a script for one of my projects that takes a rectangle and then imports all of my database-stored drawings using AOI windowing (with that single source rectangle as the bounding box). Holy ****. How did we ever survive without this?" (USA, beta tester Forum posting)
"It's amazing isn't it? All of a sudden those "impossible or too complicated to script" projects become do-able." (Australia, beta tester Forum posting on UI scripting)
"The speed improvements in image and surface handling are awesome!" (Canada)
"I am currently creating slope maps over a large area, so the new progressive rendering is making a MASSIVE difference to the speed I can create these maps, and the amount of components I have to have. I couldn’t go back anymore." (Australia)
"Speed is tremendous. I'm loving it already." (USA)
"The rendering is truly impressive! I tried it out on a drawing that always gave me a lot of trouble- no more :-)" (Australia)
"8 is gr8 m8!" (Canada)
"BTW, RenderFormatJPEG increases the speed twofold on my application for some scenarios." (USA, referring to 2x IMS speedup using a new rendering mode)
"...the progressive rendering was a godsend and it worked as advertised. The most useful piece of this new feature is being able to zoom in and out during the rendering. This lets me quickly zoom into an area of interest without having to wait for the entire drawing to render. Sweet! This is a huge productivity boost..." (USA)
"I love the rendering advancements in version 8. What a difference." (New Zealand)
For many more user comments, see User Comments on Manifold System Release 7x and prior (long!).
Questions?
Please contact us at sales@manifold.net. We would like you to be happy with your licensing of Manifold products, so please do not hesitate to ask any questions before placing an order.
Suggestions to improve Manifold are always welcome. Please see the Suggestions page for tips on making effective suggestions.